Half Knowledge

HALF KNOWLEDGE

By 

Brij Sachdeva

Following are a few expressions you might have heard.

• Half knowledge is worse than no knowledge.
• Neem Hakeem Khatra  Jaan.
• A half-truth is equivalent to a lie.

First, there is no such thing as complete knowledge. Hence there is no anything as half knowledge. It is all relative.

Osho, in his discourses, has many times told a story about Mahatma Budha. On a certain day Gautama Buddha, along with his chief disciple, Ananda, was passing through a forest. Being fall time, all the trees were shedding leaves and appearing almost naked. The forest was full of dry leaves.  Dry leaves were visible as far as the sight could go. They were enjoying the sound of dry leaves moving in the blowing wind.

Ananda asked Buddha,” Bhagwan, I have been listening to your discourses for so many years. You have spoken on almost every aspect of life. But I was trying to ask you "How much more is left to be said?”

Buddha took a few dry leaves in his hand and said,” What I have said up to now is equivalent to these few leaves in my hand, but what is remaining is equivalent to all the leaves in the forest.”

One day we were ignorant about how polio can be eradicated from this world and we lost so many lives. So many people became handicapped. Then we, by and by gathered more knowledge and we became able to eradicate polio from the world. But we have not yet been able to find a cure for so many other diseases like AIDS. We are still fighting with tuberculosis however with the help of whatsoever half knowledge we have. Tuberculosis is getting more resistant day by day. One day we shall be having enough knowledge to eradicate tuberculosis. When we were ignorant, we were fighting. Now we have become more knowledgeable, we are fighting. When we will become even more knowledgeable, even then we will be fighting. One day we will eradicate AIDS too. Then new diseases would emerge. That would be more dangerous. Then we will need more knowledge to tackle these diseases. 

There is no end to knowledge. Complete knowledge is an illusion and hence the half knowledge too. This much or that much, it is always incomplete. So, there is no complete or half knowledge. There is only less knowledge and more knowledge. 

See also: AGI- THE ARTIFICIAL GOD